zsh vs Slate

When you start typing a command, you can press the tab key and it will complete the command you started typing. If there are multiple potential commands, you can choose which one to run by simply pressing tab again. Case-insensitive by default, too.

Oh-my-zsh is a community-driven framework, which helps users with their zsh configuration and plugins. 400 plugins, 200+ themes and auto-updates to always be up to date.

Zsh intelligently determines if you are trying to complete a file path or an option, and pressing tab after typing - will reliably bring up a list of options.

Things you've learned using bash will largely apply to zsh. Scripts written in bash will run with little to no modification.

Unlike Bash, zsh does not split unquoted variables by default, making it less error-prone.

ls **/*.log for example is supported by ZSH.

Zsh will take you through a procedure which is roughly 30 minutes in length before during install. Through this procedure it asks you to set different options and customize the shell the way you want it to. Most of these settings are also found in other shells, but to customize them you have to go dig configuration files while zsh allows you to do it in the beginning.

If you spend a lot of time in the terminal, most likely you will have several terminal windows open. Zsh has great support for command line histories. The history is unique and shared through all the different instances.

Zsh can determine the context of the command you're typing in and determine if it should escape characters if you're typing in a URI.

Some programs don't support loading from stdin, but ZSH can store outputs to a temporary file, example: unzip =(curl http://example.com/someZipFile.zip)

Zsh' s correct (or correctall) is vastly superior to Bash's attempt at spelling correction.

Slate is similar to Linux WMs like Xmonad in that it is nearly infinitely configurable. You can either use the default configuration file or just Javascript for very complex/dynamic settings. Slate also offers editing a ".js" or a ".slate" file for configuration.

Hotkeys can be set to re-size and focus windows, as well as activate layout presets.

Slate is completely free to download and use, which is a great option in a field of Mac WMs that often costs money to use.

Slate allows for customizing the config file in order to emulate tiling windows.

By using a feature called "snapshots", users can set up different default window layouts in Slate that they can switch to and from on the fly.

Slate offers window hints which are an intuitive way to change window focus.